During the Swedish emigration to the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, about 1.3 million Swedes left Sweden for the United States. The main pull was the availability of low cost, high quality farm land in the upper Midwest (the area from Illinois to Montana), and high paying jobs in mechanical industries and factories in Chicago, Minneapolis, Worcester and many smaller cities. Religious freedom was also a pull factor for some. Most migration was of the chain form, with early settlers giving reports and recommendations (and travel money) to relatives and friends in Sweden, who followed the same route to new homes. A major push factor inside Sweden was population growth and the growing shortage of good farm lands. Additional factors in the earliest stages of emigration included crop failures, the lack of industrial jobs in urban Sweden, and for some the wish to escape the authority of an established state church. After 1870, transatlantic fares were cheap. By the 1880s, American railroads had agents in Sweden who offered package deals on one-way tickets for entire families. The railroad would ship the family, their house furnishings and farm tools, and provide a financial deal to spread out payments for the farm over a period of years.